EU: social partners’ answer to the consultation on working time

After years of negotiations (which, in the end, failed) on the revision of the 2003 working time directive, the social partners have to express themselves about the EU’s future courses on the subject (see our dispatch No. 100256). Employers’ representatives, BusinessEurope first, always argued that the EU didn’t have to intervene on the subject. As for the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), it defends the framework defined by the directive, though joyfully overridden by the Member States. The 1993 directive sets a maximum 48-hour work week but provides for a clause allowing to exceed it, the opt-out, after an agreement between the employee and the employer. The European Commission already established that the opt-out has led to abuses and the ETUC has been calling for its removal for a long time. Especially since, initially created for the UK, the opt-out is now used in a majority of Member States, particularly in hospitals. It is sometimes used to overcome the ECJ’s case law, which stated that inactive on-call time is considered as working time. This is another bone of contention for the social partners, as well as for debates between the Council of European Ministers and the European Parliament.